mouse hunt

The day’s catch: two mice at the office. Strange, I got a greater sense of productivity from catching the mice than from all the preparations I did for my classes.

They’re back. It was last semester when rodents seemed to everywhere. They ate and urinated on everything! Dissertations, drawers, wires… (it’s quite a long list). There were major renovations and room transfers in our building and perhaps their den or breeding ground may have been displaced. My office mate’s day started with the morning ritual of sanitizing her corner and table, which the rodents seemed to love. This time, the mice discovered the stock of mop heads in one of the storage cabinets.

It’s quite hard to ignore the brown-grayish blur at the office corner. The first mouse kept going back and forth in out supply cabinet then to my office mate’s shelf. I could not focus on whatever I was doing at the time – plus I was in search of any form of distraction to escape the task at hand. So together with my other office mate and our student volunteer, we focused our efforts into catching mouse #1. Trapped the target with the metal file case that we borrowed. That was the morning catch.

Late in the afternoon, there was another rodent struggling to cross the slippery tiled floor in the office. The office mates have gone home. It was distracting, that movement at the corner of your eye. With the same metal file case, I caught mouse #2. The mice really seemed to like the mop heads. I didn’t have the courage to clear the cabinet of mop heads in the fear of seeing a bunch of pink hairless baby mice. The last time I saw that was during elementary. Let me catch or dispose of an adult mouse or two. Just don’t ask me to deal with the quivering pink hairless bodies of tiny rodents.

Mouse hunt aside, the day did turn out to be a productive one, even if we were actively searching for distractions. There was one box left unchecked in the day’s task – my thesis proposal, which I need to be able to register for the semester. I have until Thursday for that. Hah! (Good luck with that.)

Earlier this evening, I was all geared up for a jog. All that was left to do was step out of the apartment and start jogging. Then it rained. Hard. For quite a long time. Great. No jog session for this evening, I guess. Coffee, it is then.